


Through the Glimmering Light

by Laura Shapiro (laurashapiro)



Series: Leaves of Grass [12]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anxiety, Aziraphale has a penis today, Aziraphale has a vulva today, Bondage, Bookshop Fire, Collars, Crowley has a penis today, Crowley has a vulva today, Crowley is a well-adjusted demon, Cunnilingus, Dom Crowley (Good Omens), Exhibitionism, F/F, Fan Art, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns for Aziraphale, He/Him pronouns for Crowley, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Wives, Light BDSM, M/M, Masturbation, Porn with Feelings, Public indecency, She/Her Pronouns for Crowley, She/Her pronouns for Aziraphale, Sub Aziraphale (Good Omens), Sub Crowley, Trauma, Vaginal Fingering, Voyeurism, again not at the same time, because why wouldn't you, body/gender shift mid-story, but not at the same time, celestial powers deployed for erotic purposes, explicit fan art, female-presenting aziraphale, he just has this one unresolved issue, male-presenting aziraphale, not really PTSD, softDom!Aziraphale, they're switches bitches, with some of its trappings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:35:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27762349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurashapiro/pseuds/Laura%20Shapiro
Summary: Since their anniversary, conversations with Crowley had been -- disturbed. Disturbing, if he was honest. There was a reticence about Crowley that Aziraphale hadn't seen since 1862.It wasn't that Crowley had become cold or distant -- quite the reverse, in fact. Telephone calls were now a daily, even several-times-a-day experience. Not so long ago, Crowley’s voice down the line would burst into Aziraphale’s day, a flare of unlooked-for excitement rolling through him. Now, Crowley called so often that it was beginning to worry him, and he himself was beginning to find it, if he was honest, a bit much.And there was something odd about Crowley's behaviour now, guarded and tetchy, particularly when they spent time at the bookshop.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Leaves of Grass [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1406341
Comments: 51
Kudos: 176





	Through the Glimmering Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slattern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slattern/gifts).



> This story is set just a few weeks after [Paper and Gold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23034616), and it references events in [Working Hard in Damp Places](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657057), [A Kiss is Just a Kiss](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20424884), and [I Will Make the Hymns of You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19772659). But you don’t have to have read any of those stories to enjoy this one.
> 
> Now with gorgeous explicit fan art by the amazing [cassieoh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/)!
> 
> This story is for [slattern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slattern), who knows why.

When the telephone sounded its plaintive double cry, Aziraphale was up a ladder in 19th Century Poetry, trying to locate the Whitman first edition he'd been reading last year. He hadn't thought he would want it again so soon, but there was a fragment of verse caught and looping in his head, and he knew he wouldn't be rid of it until he could find and read the whole thing. _Ohrwurm_ , Crowley called it, and Aziraphale could see his satisfied grin wrapping around the word. _One of my best._

The telephone rang again. Aziraphale dusted his hands and climbed down. It seemed only recently that he'd begun to embrace the dread instrument as something not merely useful but capable of producing pleasure, even joy -- particularly when Crowley was on the other end of the line. But since their anniversary, conversations with Crowley had been -- disturbed. Disturbing, if he was honest. There was a reticence about Crowley that Aziraphale hadn't seen since 1862.

It wasn't that Crowley had become cold or distant -- quite the reverse, in fact. Telephone calls were now a daily, even several-times-a-day experience. Not so long ago, Crowley’s voice down the line would burst into Aziraphale’s day, a flare of unlooked-for excitement rolling through him. Now, Crowley called so often that it was beginning to worry him, and he himself was beginning to find it, if he was honest, a bit much.

And there was something odd about Crowley's behaviour now, guarded and tetchy, particularly when they spent time at the bookshop. Aziraphale had tried to speak to him about it and had got nowhere.

He reached the telephone on the third ring. "A. Z. Fe--"

"It's me."

"Hello, darling. I was just thinking of you."

“Oh, yes? All evil, I hope?”

Crowley’s attempt at casual deflection shrilled a little in Aziraphale’s ear. He tutted. “Only mildly. I was remembering you telling me -- sometime in the mid-1980s, was it? -- that you were responsible for the tendency of music and lyrics to get stuck in people’s heads. You were remarkably pleased with yourself.” Aziraphale’s mind traveled to the al fresco lunch, sparkling wine and flatbread with pesto, the sun bringing out Crowley’s freckles. “You used to wear net stockings. It’s one of my few pleasant memories from that decade.”

“You liked that bistro.” A little warmth in Crowley’s voice, something he could work with.

“We should go back there.”

“Nnnnnhhh, it’s probably not there anymore...listen, angel, are you busy?”

Aziraphale pulled out his watch. “I was thinking of opening the shop, but I suppose I don’t have to. Why? Do you have something in mind?”

Silence.

“Crowley?”

“Could come over, got this bottle of Macallan I’ve been saving --”

“It’s ten o’clock in the morning!”

“All right, champagne then. And aah, I dunno,” his words were running together into stretchy vowel sounds, “a quiche? Relive the 80s?” There was pleading in it. And pleading was quite unnecessary; by now Crowley should know he was welcome, and even back when they’d had to be more careful, an offer of short crust virtually guaranteed entry.

“Brunch with you sounds delightful, my love.”

“Great, that’s -- half an hour, all right?”

“Of course. Looking forward to it.”

When Crowley rang off, Aziraphale sighed and rubbed his hands through his hair. It was like the Last Week of the World all over again.

The Whitman line chimed fervently in his ear. _As if a phantom caress’d me, I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore. As if a phantom caress’d me, I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore. As if a phantom caress’d me..._

* * *

Aziraphale was in the cellar, evaluating selections for post-prandial tipples, when the bell jangled. Before he could make it upstairs, Crowley was bellowing, “Aziraphale? Aziraphale! Where are you?”

His heart leapt to his throat as he hurried toward the front of the shop. So soon. Could Hell be after him so soon? He’d thought, he’d hoped so desperately they’d have more time than this, they hadn’t even made a plan -- “I’m right here, I’m here, what is it, what’s happened?”

Crowley crossed the room in two great strides and gathered Aziraphale into his arms in a desperate, breath-defying squeeze. “Angel,” he choked out against Aziraphale’s face, his quick hot exhale making Aziraphale blink. The edge of a bakery box and the cool, hard shape of a wine bottle banged against the backs of his thighs.

“Crowley, Crowley,” Aziraphale wrapped his arms round Crowley’s neck, one hand in his hair, returning the pressure, then tried to put some space between them so he could get a look at his face. Crowley clung like a limpet. “All right, stay here,” he said into Crowley’s neck, cradling his head. “But, please, what’s wrong? Is it --” he swallowed, “Did you -- hear something?”

Fingers tightened at his waist then, digging in, ten hard points as Crowley pushed him away to arms’ length, box and bottle dropping to the carpet. His brows were at his hairline, and through his glasses Aziraphale could see that the gold of his eyes was starting to take over the whites. His face was pale and strained. “No! Did you?” His voice shook.

Aziraphale relaxed. He squeezed Crowley’s shoulder. “I didn’t. Not a peep. Everything’s okay, Crowley. Everything’s just fine.”

Whipping his head round, Crowley let go of him and stalked around the shop, poking his nose into corners, flaring his nostrils. Every few seconds he would look over his shoulder as if to make sure Aziraphale was still there. Aziraphale had seen this several times in the past few weeks, whenever Crowley visited the shop, but never as bad as this. “Darling, what --”

Crowley was circling him now, which was at least familiar, but his teeth were set in a grimace and he was breathing feverishly. “Nnnn -- I -- eeehhh -- it’s nothing, angel,” he gritted out, clenching and releasing his fists.

Reaching for his hand, Aziraphale found it cold and clammy, very atypical indeed. “It doesn’t look like nothing,” he said. Crowley pressed his hand and then dropped it, wiping his own on his jeans.

“Naaaah, I’m fine. Let’s have brunch.”

“My dear. Will you take off your glasses for me, please?”

Crowley, who had bent to pick up the box, straightened with empty hands. “Uh…”

There was a long pause, during which Crowley did not remove his glasses and actually looked _guilty._ Aziraphale’s spine straightened with resolve. “Upstairs. Now.”

* * *

Aziraphale sat on the edge of the bed and patted the space next to him, but Crowley was pacing around the room, his hands jammed in his incommodious pockets. Brunch, Aziraphale noted, had been left in the shop and would likely be kept waiting some time.

They had made this room comfortable together. A year before, it hadn’t even had a bed in it; had been stacked with books, papers, and mementos in a precarious floor-to-ceiling forest of dust arranged according to Aziraphale’s extremely particular but not very accessible filing system. Now, they sometimes slept together here, under a feather duvet in a tartan cover. There were tables for lamps, Crowley’s phone charger, cups of cocoa. There were drawers for pyjamas, novelty socks given as humorous gifts, massage oil, silk rope, biscuit tins and chocolate boxes. Light filtered through the curtains and, via the open door, from the oculus.

Crowley, Aziraphale knew for a fact, felt safe and happy here. If only he would stop pacing.

Aziraphale took a breath. Not so long ago, just the intimacy of being in this room together would have been unthinkable. And it was still hard, for both of them, to remember that it was safe to be open about what they were to each other. But now they were both able to share so much -- and not only physically.

From what had begun a little more than a year ago with a heedless kiss, like a dam bursting, their hunger for one another had given way to communion, an outpouring of feeling beyond sensation that at last allowed them to speak their needs plainly and without reserve.

Sometimes. Occasionally a little supplemental encouragement was required.

“You know if you need anything from me, anything at all, you can ask for it.”

One of Crowley’s strangled noises emerged from the corner of the room, and Aziraphale turned to see him with his head in his hands. He’d removed his glasses and was driving the heels of his hands into his eyes. Aziraphale was pierced with sympathy, but also frankly baffled. All his senses went automatically on alert, scanning for aethereal and demonic presences even though he knew very well none were to be found. “Darling, please, you’re scaring me.”

At this, Crowley crumpled in a heap on the rag rug, all the tension gone out of him in a great sigh. “Sorry, angel, I’m sorry. It’s okay, look --” he scooted closer to the bed, eyes on the floor, one hand flailing out to grasp Aziraphale’s calf. He took a great shuddery breath. “What do you remember about being discorporated?”

Terror bolted through Aziraphale. If they lost these bodies -- “Crowley! You’re not --”

“No! No, Satan, no. I’m safe. I’m fine. Sorry, sorry, shit.” Crowley used Aziraphale’s knees to lever himself up onto the bed, collapsing on his back, arms spread wide.

Aziraphale found that he was on his feet, wringing his hands. He had caught Crowley’s anxiety, his fear, and he did not like it. At least, he thought wryly, they were together in it -- in all their feelings now. He lowered himself slowly back onto the bed, sitting next to Crowley where he was splayed out, the tension evident in his clenched hands. “Good lord. What on earth is the matter with you?”

“I’m, I’ve been having some. _Feelings._ About that day.”

Aziraphale exhaled. “Ah.”

“So if you could just. Tell me what it was like. For you.”

“Well, I…” he turned toward Crowley, then turned back again and looked at his hands, twisting in his lap. “Oh, dear. Well, I tried to reach the Almighty, you see. Directly. A-and. Well. You were right.” He swallowed, remembering the anguish of that moment, the Metatron extinguishing his last sparks of hope.

“Yeah,” Crowley said softly. Aziraphale could hear “sorry” in it, though he thought perhaps no one else in the world could. Aziraphale turned back to him, laid his hand on Crowley’s knee.

“So as soon as that was over I tried to call you. But then that man, Shadwell, barged in, and accused me of being a demon! He must have seen the Metatron, and the circle was still powered up, and if you’ll believe it, he was trying to _exorcise_ me --”

“When you say the circle was powered up -- angel, did you have lit candles in here?”

“Well, of course, how else would I create a communication portal?”

Crowley drew his hand slowly down over his face. “Satan’s bollocks. All right, go on.”

“Well, that’s all, really. Shadwell backed me into the circle and the next thing I knew I was facing the Quartermaster, barking at me about having left my corporation behind.” Aziraphale felt himself starting to smile. He knew pride was a sin, but of all the things he had done on the Last Day of the World, he had come to feel quite chuffed about that interaction in particular. “I told you about that, didn’t I?”

Aziraphale looked for the hint of a smile teasing the corner of Crowley’s mouth, but it did not appear. “Might have heard the story, yeah,” Crowley said. “What then?”

“It all got a bit strange after that,” Aziraphale frowned. He lay down next to Crowley, squinting up at the ceiling. “Once I was...on Earth, I suppose I should say, though I wasn’t really ‘on’ anything...I seemed to find you straightaway, wherever you were. And you -- you sounded very much the worse for wear.”

Crowley screwed up his face. “Sounded? Wait --”

“I couldn’t see you,” Aziraphale explained. “Once I was discorporated, I didn’t have the use of any of my human senses. Even my hearing, it was more, sort of...vibrational.” He rubbed his temples, trying to remember. “It’s all gone a bit vague, to tell you the truth.”

Crowley rolled to face him. “Try. It’s important.”

“I could tell that you were intoxicated. More than you usually allow yourself to be. And you were --” he flicked his eyes away for an instant, not sure Crowley would appreciate this acknowledgement of his vulnerability. But surely that was ridiculous. “You were crying.”

“Right.” Crowley’s throat bobbed. “Go on.”

“You said you’d lost your best friend. Oh, Crowley, you sounded so desolate, and all I could think was how I’d let you down. You’d needed me and I wasn’t there for you.” Aziraphale reached for Crowley’s hand and clasped it in both of his, but Crowley was no longer looking at him, his head turned to the side. “I’d pushed you away, said horrible things, ended our friendship -- and it was awful. I wanted to tell you so many things. I wanted to tell you that you were my best friend too, and that I’d made a terrible mistake, but I knew we’d never get a chance to repair it if we didn’t get to Tadfield.”

Crowley, his head still turned away, made a creaking sort of sigh, and then turned his head to face Aziraphale. One of his hands flailed a bit. Aziraphale recognized his slightly crumpled expression as one of frustration and surprise. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t say what I should have said,” Aziraphale hurried on, aching to explain himself.

Crowley winced and made a gesture as if to wave it away. Then he took hold of Aziraphale’s hand. “When I told you the shop burned down…” His voice went raw and thready, dissolved.

“Yes, that was very painful to hear.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, I suppose I sort of...compartmentalised? Is that what they call it? We had so little time, you see, to get to Tadfield and I had to make you understand --”

“I was there.”

“What?”

Crowley’s grip clenched around Aziraphale’s hand and his eyes, still fully gold, shone in the room’s dim light. “I couldn’t find you, couldn’t sense your presence anywhere. You weren’t answering your phone. I drove to the shop and found it on fire, trucks outside, sirens blaring, smoke and flames everywhere. I went inside. You’d gone.”

Crowley’s voice broke and the tears came.

“Oh, my dearest --” Aziraphale began pulling him into an embrace, but Crowley laid his free hand on Aziraphale’s chest, pushing back.

“No, I want you to hear this.” He wiped his face on his sleeve. “I went into the shop. Everything was gone, everything you loved, everything we’d shared, felt like. And you’d gone, I couldn’t find you. I thought they’d killed you. And that was it for me, Aziraphale. I was done. For a few hours after that I didn’t care if the world burned with you.”

Aziraphale, heart clenching with pain, brain whirling with belated understanding, set his teeth. It was hard to tolerate the notion, even for an instant, of a Crowley who wouldn’t fight for the world down to the very last second -- even though he had met this Crowley at the pub. Even as Aziraphale admitted that the prospect of a world without Crowley in it had wracked him with horror ever since the Arrangement began, and had made him do some fairly unconscionable things himself.

“That sounds -- oh, my dear, that sounds utterly terrifying. And excruciating for you. I’m so sorry.”

Crowley, both hands covering his face, nodded.

“May I hold you now?”

Crowley grunted and mopped his face on his sleeve. “Wouldn’t want to get snot on your cardigan.” Then he curled into Aziraphale’s side, draping one leg over Aziraphale’s hips. Aziraphale gathered him up, stroking his hair.

“There’s been a part of us missing, this whole year. A part of you I haven’t seen or understood the whole time we’ve been together.”

“A part of you, too, I think.”

An idea bolted through Aziraphale: a memory, a great shock. “That’s why you wouldn’t accept my apologies! After we saved the world --”

“We didn’t save the world, angel --”

“We’ve been through this, we _helped_ \--”

“If you call buggering up every blessed thing that could be buggered up helping --”

“You wouldn’t let me apologise! Because when you said ‘I lost my best friend,’ you weren’t thinking I’d ended our friendship -- you were thinking I was _dead._ ”

“Mmh. And you had no idea I’d seen your shop burn and thought you weren’t just discorporated but --” here Crowley shuddered a little “-- gone. You just thought you’d broken up with me.”

Aziraphale lifted Crowley’s head in his hands, gave him a shrewd, analyzing look. “I did break up with you.”

Crowley smiled for the first time that day. “Yes, you were very mean about it. Five-star bastard. Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Aziraphale kissed Crowley’s forehead and laid his head back on his breast. “So you’ve been having -- oh, my dear, is it post-traumatic stress disorder?”

Crowley huffed out a breath. “Nah. I’ve been fine all year, until our anniversary. Like I said then, mourning days, they’re a bitch. Now I’m just -- let’s call it, a little twitchy.”

“You’re generally a little twitchy.” Aziraphale went on stroking his hair, slow strokes, raking his nails lightly along Crowley’s scalp.

“Twitchier than usual,” Crowley allowed.

“How can I help? What do you need?”

Silence. Crowley’s hand clutched and released on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “This helps. Telling you. You being here, holding me. Being upstairs, or at my flat, out -- downstairs is still --”

“I understand.”

The arms circling his shoulders grew restless, and Crowley burrowed his face in Aziraphale’s neck. “But what if they --”

It was an old question. Over the millennia, it had been Aziraphale who generally asked it, and Crowley who reassured him. Crowley had first asked it a year ago, when their sexual relationship had just started, their love had first been avowed. Aziraphale had the same answer now as he had then.

“We’ll fight them, together. My darling, I outwitted archangels and princes of Hell. You _stopped time_ for me. Do you really think there’s anything we can’t do?”

“My brave, brilliant angel.”

“My brave, brilliant demon.” He kissed the top of Crowley’s head, smelling his tears, his nervous sweat. But feeling him relax, now, against him. “Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

One of Crowley’s long strings of consonants emerged. Then, “Stay.”

It pierced Aziraphale’s heart. “My dearest. Oh, Crowley. Always.”

* * *

_Stay_ , Aziraphale thought that evening, after Crowley had gone back to his flat. Crowley had fallen asleep in his arms soon after managing to utter that word, after Aziraphale’s reassurances. A few hours later they had finally eaten the quiche, quietly, in the upstairs flat, and then Crowley had kissed him once on the mouth, muttered something about his plants, and hurried off.

Aziraphale turned the word over in his mind, and his own reassurances too. He would be at Crowley’s side as long as Crowley needed him. It might take Aziraphale a while to make up his mind, but once it was made up there was no changing it. Crowley, he knew, understood his commitment, his love. And yet they both knew, for all the power they could wield together, they might still be tested.

But what Crowley was going through wasn’t an intellectual problem. He wasn’t truly thinking about what might happen in the future. He was reliving the past. Or, really, his body was.

Crowley knew, consciously, that Aziraphale would never leave him. But his nervous system didn’t believe it. It needed soothing. It needed a kind of reassurance that could never come from words alone.

Aziraphale gestured at the kettle and it began to heat. He searched the back of the cabinet for the box of Russian Caravan he knew he had around somewhere, though he hadn’t tasted any in several decades. Ah, there it was. He opened the tin, inhaled the deep, smoky fragrance. He had first tasted it not long after their Bastille adventure, shortly after the tea had made its way to England, and from then on had drunk it when he wanted to think of Crowley, an evocation of the middle note of the demon’s scent. Now it reminded him of the powerful ache of those times.

A symbol was what was needed. Something solid and representational. Grand gestures weren’t his thing, really -- they were where Crowley shone. It had taken Aziraphale decades to manage the holy water, and that had been the fulfillment of a specific request. But Aziraphale, a student of literature since well before it had been written down, deeply understood the value of a powerful symbol.

He had shopping to do.

* * *

A few days later, having acquired what was necessary, Aziraphale called Crowley to invite him for a picnic out at Kew, like the one they’d had after saving the world.

“I’ll see to all the details, darling,” he said. “All you need to do is drive. I’ll turn up at your flat tomorrow at noon, all right?”

Aziraphale pleased himself with a traditional picnic basket: egg and cress, ham and mustard, salmon and cucumber, scotch eggs, sausage rolls, a pork pie, scones with cream and jam of course, Victoria sponge and a miniature lemon drizzle that looked absolutely scrummy. There were also a thermos of tea and two bottles of champagne, keeping miraculously chilled alongside the tartan blanket, plates, and cutlery. And tucked underneath, in a black box, something he hoped would allow Crowley to relax.

Aziraphale did so enjoy being the one to do the looking after. Crowley rarely let him plan their outings, to choose where they went and what they ate, and as a rule he was only too happy to leave these decisions in Crowley’s capable hands. Crowley knew what Aziraphale liked -- had made a study of it -- and loved to please him.

But Aziraphale, once in a while, liked to Manage Things. Particularly when Crowley was in need of being managed.

He rapped on Crowley’s door and pressed it open.

“Come in, angel,” Crowley called, in a slightly higher register than usual. Advancing into the lounge, Aziraphale found Crowley rummaging in the fridge, a black mini-skirted derriere all that was visible at the moment. A welcome sight. “Made a salad,” Crowley said, emerging from behind the fridge with a glass bowl in her hands. Aziraphale’s stomach flipped giddily.

Crowley’s short hair was spiked up and she had trimmed the sides close. Her eyes, not yet covered, were lined thickly with black. She wore at least five rings in each ear in rainbow hues and a battered black motorcycle jacket studded with safety pins and various patches, badges, and stickers. Her t-shirt said “SIREN” in large orange letters, somewhat challenging to read as they dipped diagonally over her modest bosom. Below the short, tight black skirt spreading over her slight hips were black net stockings, artful rips placed here and there, disappearing into black boots red-laced halfway up Crowley’s calves.

Crowley had remembered his throwaway remark the other day about the stockings. Heat flared through Aziraphale’s heart and straight down into his groin, already aching at the sight of her. Crowley often slid around the gender spectrum but it was rare for her to change her whole corporation like this. What a treat!

“You look breathtaking, my dear,” Aziraphale said, advancing around the counter to take her into his arms. He plucked the bowl from her hands so she could wind them around his neck, and he kissed her lipsticked mouth, tasting the color but knowing that in her infernal expertise she would not let it smear. “How lovely of you to indulge my nostalgia.”

Crowley’s cheeks pinked at that. “Always indulging you. My specialty.”

“It is, isn’t it,” Aziraphale beamed. He kissed her warm cheek, then stepped back to hold her at arms length, raking his eyes over her shamelessly. “My goodness, you’ve done it all, haven’t you? Are those the same boots?”

“Same style, new pair. Doc Martens. See the stitching?”

She turned to fetch her glasses off the counter and Aziraphale noticed the tattered ACT UP flag pinned to the back of her jacket. “This is the original jacket, though. I didn’t think you kept these things.”

“Some things.” Crowley turned back, glasses in hand. “Ready to go?”

Aziraphale thought for a moment. He hadn’t considered this at all when he’d begun the day, but he was learning to be a bit spontaneous. And for all his anxieties past, he did rather love surprises. He furrowed his brow and pulled down a somewhat complicated miracle, shifting corporation first, then clothing. At least he’d had practice making a vulva -- that was certainly more complicated than tailoring a waistcoat.

He had never tried this before. Aziraphale had never needed to infiltrate communities of women or present as a woman for work, and until becoming intimate with Crowley, Aziraphale had rarely considered the advantages of altering his whole corporation for pleasure.

Catching her own reflection in the hallway mirror, Aziraphale said, “There. I think that will do nicely.”

Aziraphale had called upon her memories of the women she’d met briefly during the Second World War, driving ambulances. Her ensemble, though differently tailored to accommodate a sizable bosom and wider hips, was essentially the same. She’d had to whip up some underclothing adjustments to keep everything from jiggling about, and turning to examine her silhouette, she was more than satisfied with the result. She felt elegant, refined; the waistcoat nipped in only slightly at the waist; the trousers following the line of her hips but dropping away to give ease to more generous thighs. Her tie was of course still immaculately tied, wing cufflinks still fastened and shining. The coat was cut a bit shorter now, while her hair was slightly longer, the curls somewhat more pronounced but still rather a masculine look with a quiff at the front.

Crowley looked appropriately gobsmacked. Aziraphale didn’t know when she’d seen her eyes so wide. She appeared to be incapable of speech. “W--”

Oh, the dear. It reminded Aziraphale very pleasantly of their first kiss. “We’re going out, and you appear to be a woman. Now that we’re together, you see, I didn’t want anybody to mistake me for a heterosexual.”

Crowley snapped her mouth shut, then threw her head back and laughed. In the higher register it was even more musical than usual. Aziraphale was all delight. “As if anyone, anywhere, could mistake you for a heterosexual.”

Aziraphale tilted her chin haughtily. “I’m very pleased you think so.” She felt interestingly confident in this new body. The centre of gravity was lower, and she stood solidly in her brogues and considered what to do next. They had planned to go out, of course, but Crowley still needed tending to. And she was quite eager to see this new body of Crowley’s, as well. “Now, before we go, my dear, I wonder if there is something you would do for me.”

She reached for Crowley’s hand, finding it warm and strong and just slightly smaller than usual in her own, and towed her gently to Crowley’s palatial bathroom.

“We taking a bath?” Crowley murmured, nose under Aziraphale’s ear and clever fingers already working at her bowtie. Aziraphale gently smacked her hand away.

“We are not,” she said sternly. She didn’t think she’d ever been stern before. She was discovering all sorts of new moods. This was fun. “But you will be taking your clothes off.”

“Oh, I will, will I?”

“Neatly, if you please. You’ll be putting them back on shortly.”

Crowley pouted, but was already bending to unlace her boots. “Doesn’t sound that great to me.”

Aziraphale lifted her chin with two fingers until Crowley raised her eyes, surprised. “You’ll do as I tell you, dearest,” she said softly, but putting a little vigor into it. “And you will like it.”

Crowley shivered. “Yes, angel.”

While Crowley dealt with her boots (it was just as well both of them had long experience with patience), Aziraphale removed her cufflinks and rolled up her sleeves. Her forearms were slightly plumper, the hair softer and less pronounced. She stroked down her inner arm from elbow to wrist and shivered as the sensation raised the tiny golden hairs and sent a tingling warmth radiating all the way to her breast. Her skin was amazingly soft. Why hadn’t she tried this before?

She looked up to see Crowley had shed boots and jacket and was facing the bath, peeling the t-shirt over her head. She was removing her brassiere, plain black in a sport style, with a racer back. For all their close quarters at the time, Aziraphale had never caught a glimpse of Nanny Ashtoreth’s underclothes, but she had supposed (not that she had really allowed herself to imagine) that Crowley might have favored delicate, elegant scraps of silk and lace, not something practical like this.

“That brassiere does gorgeous things to your shoulders,” she remarked, admiring Crowley’s strong lean trapezius, the arc of her deltoid.

Crowley’s cheeks pinked. “Suits the look, is all.”

Ah, of course. Crowley dressed for fashion right down to her skin. “Well, no matter, you won’t be wearing underthings when we go out today.”

Crowley, in the act of pulling it off over her head, froze. “I won’t.”

“You will not.”

“O...kay.”

“Turn so I can see you, please.”

Crowley turned around, unfastening her skirt. Her breasts were small and upturned, widely spaced, tiny coral nipples growing erect in the cool air. Aziraphale thought Crowley’s whole breast could fit in her mouth and couldn’t wait to find out.

In this shape she had the slightest swell of a belly, from navel to mons, and Aziraphale went positively dizzy at the sight of it -- Crowley with body fat! What a revelation! The black briefs were discarded, and last the stockings, held up by some invisible means, were rolled down. Crowley was naked but for the bold thatch of red hair between her legs, matching swirls under each arm and the downy fuzz everywhere else. And, of course, her light dusting of freckles.

Aziraphale still hadn’t touched her. Crowley was breathing faster, though, under her gaze.

“My dear. My Crowley. Surely you are the most desirable creature who ever lived.” She heard Crowley catch her breath at that. “Get into the bath for me please.”

“Should I turn the water on?”

“Do not turn the water on. Just stand there for me. That’s good, dear. Arms above your head.”

“What are you --”

“I want you smooth and soft for me everywhere, my love,” Aziraphale said, moving her eyes from Crowley’s arms to her face, catching her wondering golden eyes, rimmed with kohl, the lashes dark and thick with mascara, and as ever unblinking. “I want you completely, utterly naked for me. Will that please you?”

She held Crowley’s eyes as her pupils went wide and fat, half-moons in each iris, the gold beginning to reach each eyelid. “Fuck. Yes, angel.”

Crowley was utterly delicious like this, quivering at the edge of what she wanted and what she was not sure she should allow. They had danced at this edge before, but never like this, with Crowley in such a vulnerable emotional state. Aziraphale would keep her balanced and whole. Aziraphale would keep her safe.

“My precious darling. I am going to take such good care of you.” She leaned in to place a tender kiss on Crowley’s open lips, feeling Crowley’s hot breath feather across her cheek. “Now keep your hands up. You can brace them on the walls if you need to.” She had...uses for Crowley today, verging into new territory. And she felt different, somehow. More capable of seeing to her as she needed.

If not, perhaps, exactly as she wanted.

Pulling down an indolent miracle, Aziraphale ran one slow, teasing finger down Crowley’s right arm from wrist to elbow, then to shoulder. Tiny, almost invisible red-gold hairs followed in its wake, dropping off into the bath. Goosebumps rose on Crowley’s creamy dappled skin.

“Is my hand too cold?” Crowley ran so warm, Aziraphale sometimes worried about this.

“It’s fine,” Crowley said, somewhat hoarsely.

Capturing Crowley’s chin with her hand, she turned her face to see those golden eyes, felt the plunge in her gut at Crowley’s trust, the love written there. “Truly?”

Crowley licked her lips. “‘S always good when you touch me. Always.”

Aziraphale’s skin blossomed with sensation, a tingling itch, her nipples erect and chafing against her brassiere. She savoured it, but kept her expression firm. “You know you must tell me if ever it isn’t.”

“‘Course.” A slight nod, and Crowley licked her lips again. She was angling for a kiss, but Aziraphale would not be distracted. She reached beneath Crowley’s arm with her fingertip and painted away the fragrant bit of russet fluff there, then stepped behind and around her to stroke the hair off her other arm.

Crowley was shivering and twitching at the light contact. She would hotly deny that she was ticklish (nothing could be less demonic), but she could not bear the kind of light, barely-there touches that made Aziraphale instantly hard and wet and breathless. She was bearing it now, though; both hands on the slate wall of the sunken bath, fingers flexing.

Aziraphale stepped round to her other side and drew away the hair from her left arm. Crowley was all-over goosebumps now, struggling to be still as Aziraphale took a breath and blew away the tiny hairs that had collected on her skin. She swept her finger into the hollow of her armpit and Crowley instinctively twisted away, caught herself, let out a long breath and flattened her palms against the shower wall.

“You’re doing so well, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured, nosing up into the bare underarm and taking deep inbreaths of Crowley’s scent: earth, animal rut, leather, metal, smoke, citrus peel, burnt sugar. The familiar and glorious heady brew that Aziraphale adored, but somewhat different in this corporation; there was a verdant quality to it, a little green and grassy. Olive oil? Fresh-cut hay? Aziraphale could spend hours breathing it and analyzing it, but there was the most delightful work to be done. Play. It was work and play. It was love.

She stepped back behind Crowley and drew her hands lightly down her back, removing the almost invisible hairs from every inch of skin as Crowley let out a tiny whine. Aziraphale stroked over the pert arse, somewhat rounder in her new shape, and laid a kiss on her tailbone. The smell of Crowley here flooded Aziraphale’s mouth, and heat gathered between her legs.

“Turn around, please, and move away from the wall. Put one foot up on the lip of the bath. Keep your arms over your head.”

Aziraphale stepped out of the shower area onto the bath mat and watched Crowley instantly and precisely obey her instructions. She grew wet.

Crowley had her arms draped over her head, her back arched, breasts displayed proudly alongside her bare underarms. One elegant leg was up on the lip of the bath, long toes flexing on its edge betraying her tension. Crowley’s lips were parted, chest rising and falling at an accelerated rate. She was flushed. Her gaze shone on Aziraphale’s face like the summer sun, hot and desperate.

“My love, you are pleasing me so wonderfully, so perfectly. You are so beautiful I can scarcely control myself.” Indeed, Aziraphale’s cunt clenched as she said it.

“Then don’t,” Crowley said, her voice low and inviting. Aziraphale looked for the corner of a smile on her face, the shade of playfulness there, but there wasn’t any. This might be a wile, but it was a serious one.

“Ah, but you see, I have _plans_ ,” Aziraphale said, pressing the tips of all ten fingers to Crowley’s throat and stroking slowly down the buttery smooth skin to her chest, over her breasts, down her ribcage, and over her belly. At Crowley’s feet, a thin harvest of red-gold hair fell, reaped from the planes of her body as she gasped and trembled. It was all Aziraphale could do not to feast on her then and there. She was burning for it. But she would wait.

She knelt down on the bathmat and inspected Crowley’s thighs, very slightly plumper than in her usual configuration but still lean and taut with muscle, a bit knobby at the knee. Crowley had removed the hair from them already, from hip to ankle, and from each toe. Pity, really, as Aziraphale had been looking forward to doing it herself. And she knew that whenever Crowley had a vulva, she removed the hair from her labia and perineum, and this was a blessed crime because Aziraphale had never wanted to stroke her there more than in this moment.

Glancing up at Crowley, she saw her pupils dilated, face red, breath heaving. “You’ve done so much of my work for me already,” Aziraphale said with a pout.

“No one is regretting that more than me right now, angel,” Crowley huffed out. “But you could still -- touch me --”

Juice flooded Aziraphale’s cunt. Not a wile this time. Straight out pleading. How lovely, when they hadn’t even begun the day yet. Aziraphale tried to contain her smile before things got wholly out of hand.

She rose up on her knees and regarded the bit of carefully-trimmed carmine fluff on Crowley’s mons, the one bit of hair left on her body apart from her sculpted coif. It was in fact aesthetically pleasing, like every one of Crowley’s decorative touches -- carefully considered, eminently flattering. She loved Crowley’s flaming hair, its scent, its texture, its color that was so suggestive of Crowley’s personality, her heart. She could leave it untouched.

But then Aziraphale considered what was underneath, this one precious part of Crowley’s body that she had never seen, and she knew that she had to do it, had to have all of Crowley naked before her. “Open your legs just a little wider for me, please.”

With a tiny strangled sound, Crowley complied, angling her knee outward. Her fragrance wafted to Aziraphale’s nose, the rich creaminess, the brine, the succulence, oh god. Crowley’s labia shone wet in the cool light. Aziraphale swallowed hastily.

She raised two fingers to Crowley’s mons and stroked down, once, softly but decisively, just to the base of her clit where it jutted hard and red, poking out between glistening lips. Then Aziraphale leaned forward and blew the hair away.

The pout of Crowley’s cunt was a narrow vee, well-defined from the slanting curve of her hip and thigh. Her mons rose with the most delicate plumpness, dipping down again into a slight flat plane before the gentle curve of her belly. Aziraphale stood up and stepped back, to regard Crowley in her splendor, proud, submissive, and fully naked for Aziraphale at last. She shone like a star.

“Oh, you are beautiful,” Aziraphale breathed, “so beautiful for me. I am so grateful.”

“Look like a plucked chicken,” Crowley gasped out, but she was smiling.

* * *

Crowley squirmed against the Bentley’s seat and shouted at a hapless BMW driver who was trying to cut her up. This was going to be a long drive. Aziraphale, for reasons best known to herself, had insisted on Kew for today’s picnic. They hadn’t been there since their first one, a little over a year ago. It felt like their anniversary just kept on happening over and over and Crowley wasn’t sure she was on board with that. Wasn’t the whole point of this whatever-it-was Aziraphale had up her sleeve to get Crowley to stop fixating on what happened a year ago? Almost happened. Sort of happened and then unhappened. Anyway.

Fixating was the word, but Crowley’s fixation was in an altogether different direction just now. The whole car smelled of Aziraphale’s delicious new scent. Never mind her barber’s recommendation; her new corporation was 100% pure angel with the former musk replaced with something teasingly ripe, almost lurid. She was still fresh as a daisy and yet somehow there was a dark, wet, unctuous quality -- steamy like a jungle, juicy like, well. Crowley’s mouth was watering, and that was the least of it.

Crowley had of course gone without knickers plenty of times (indeed for whole centuries). But never in a miniskirt, cut above mid-thigh and currently riding up so she could feel the Bentley’s leather upholstery pressed up against her naked pussy. She was leaving trails all over the seat, could smell herself layered over Aziraphale’s smell and Kew was miles and miles away and she was going to be like this in public, naked under her clothes with this womanly Aziraphale and her weirdly hot new extra-dominant attitude on a fucking picnic for hours. She swerved to avoid a lorry and almost crashed the car.

“Do be careful, Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured, sounding not even slightly distressed.

It was definitely weird.

Crowley risked a glance over. Aziraphale was not white-knuckling the grab-bars or the dashboard or furrowing her brow. She was looking contentedly through the basket in her lap, her soft hand curled gently around the handle. Crowley shivered at the memory of that hand drawing down her body, light as a feather, cool against her burning skin. Fuck.

Aziraphale had taken control of Crowley many times before, of course. But Crowley had never seen her like this. Well, she had never seen _her_ at all.

The basket rested on an expanded lap. Crowley had adored Aziraphale’s generous round thighs for millennia, but she found herself gobsmacked by the transformation; the additional swells of plushy fat only enhancing their obvious strength and solidity. The curve of Aziraphale’s hips was now further rounded to complement the magnificent arse she’d always had, and her waist dipped in just enough to make Crowley desperate to get her arms around her. Aziraphale’s belly remained soft, thank Someone, but now served as a kind of launching pad for the most magnificent breasts Crowley had ever seen. Or at least, she assumed they would be, once she got the blessed layers off. Clearly some kind of armored superstructure was at work under there.

What Crowley could see of Aziraphale’s skin, her dimpled hands, the forearms she’d revealed earlier (every part of her looked so fucking eatable), the gentle curve of her throat, the very slightly remodeled chin and cheek, was softer than it had ever been. And Aziraphale had only ever been soft.

Well, on the outside. There was a titanium core beneath, and Crowley was getting a good look at that too, today. More than ever before, in fact. She thought of the pressure of that tender hand wrapped firmly around her jaw, guiding her eyes to meet stormcloud blue. _“Truly?”_ A voice, gentle as ever, wrapped around indomitable will. An angel who would accept nothing less than naked honesty.

An angel who was, just now, poking about in the picnic hamper wearing her bastard-with-a-secret smile. Crowley adored this smile but she’d never seen it on this version of Aziraphale’s face. The thrill of it raced down Crowley’s spine. She was just about managing the mingled anticipation, barely banked arousal, and shadings of anxiety when one of Aziraphale’s curls, slightly longer now, fell forward onto her temple and Aziraphale carelessly tucked it back. Her broad, elegant fingers brushed her cheek and Crowley caught her quiet intake of breath and jerked her eyes back to the road, downshifting just in time to enter the Chiswick Roundabout. She could practically hear Aziraphale blushing.

“So you’ve never --” Crowley stopped, cleared her throat, and began again in a less piercing tone. “You’ve never had --” _tits!_ Her brain screamed unhelpfully. _A gorgeous rack!_ “--this corporation before?”

“Never. It wasn’t necessary for my work, you know, and, well, it always seemed...”

“Not your sort of thing?” Crowley had worried about this, was still vaguely worried about it, Aziraphale had been so very firmly locked into a single presentation for an entire immortal existence -- not just in essence but in terms of desires. Always very happy to see Crowley in any shape, but --

“A much more difficult way to live, I was going to say,” Aziraphale said, a little sadly, and Crowley felt ridiculous, and chastened.

“Ah. Well, it is that.” She blew out a breath, heading for Kew Bridge. Nearly there.

“Though of course, for us, I’d imagine there are ways to avoid the worst of it.”

“Depends on how many frivolous miracles you want noted on your performance review,” Crowley smiled. “Not that we have to worry about that now.” She darted a glance over to Aziraphale, who was absently stroking her bottom lip with her thumb. “And there are some advantages.”

Aziraphale was quiet for a while, and then murmured, “I didn’t think it would feel so different. After all, I’ve already enjoyed having a vulva.” Her fingers danced lightly at her jaw, the bit of throat exposed over her bowtie. “I thought that would be the beginning and the end of it.”

“For some people, maybe,” Crowley said, watching the gentle movement of those fingertips, the parted pink lips, the wonder on the beloved face. “But never for you, angel.”

A cool hand slid onto Crowley’s thigh, bare beneath the mesh stocking, and squeezed. “Nor for you either, I think.”

Crowley’s pussy contracted, slippery on the seat. “Ngh. No.”

“You’ll show me.”

* * *

Aziraphale, replete, swallowed her penultimate bite of lemon drizzle -- just as scrummy as she’d hoped -- and looked down at Crowley’s head resting on the blanket. Crowley had curled herself into a demure yet still serpentine shape on her side, legs together. Occasionally she gave her skirt a tug, although this had happened less often as they got through the champagne.

“How’s the cake, angel?”

“Come here and find out,” Aziraphale told her, picking up the last bite in her fingers. Crowley leant up on her elbows with a grin, and Aziraphale reached over with the sticky morsel. Through her glasses, Aziraphale couldn’t track the movement of her eyes, but Crowley’s nostrils flared, and when Aziraphale dipped her chin, the red lips parted and she pushed the cake inside. Crowley’s tongue on her fingertips sent a flutter straight into her underclothes.

“Mm, that’s a treat,” Crowley said around her mouthful. “Maison Bertaux?”

“Breadstall,” Aziraphale said. “Their lemon drizzle is superior.” Her heart quickened in her chest. This was the moment. “I have another treat for you. I hope you’ll find it just as delicious.”

Crowley craned her neck forward again. “Something to eat, then? Or drink?” she said optimistically, licking her lips.

“Not quite.” Aziraphale reached back into the basket and withdrew the matte black box tied with a silver ribbon. She handed it to Crowley, whose immaculate black eyebrows went all the way up, her forehead creasing like an accordion.

“What’s this?” Crowley tugged at the bow, and slowly lifted the lid. Inside, nestled on red velvet, was a silver collar, about an inch wide, embossed with scales like a snake. At the back, a locking roller-bar mechanism would keep it securely in place. In front, a gold-plated o-ring, cut with wings and crowned with a lion’s head in the design of Aziraphale’s signet ring, allowed the wearer to be bound or shackled.

It had been perhaps thirty seconds and Crowley hadn’t moved, the box’s lid still in her hands, her mouth open, her breath held.

“Are you all right, my dear?”

“Put it on me,” she said, her voice high and tight. She swallowed, and swallowed again, setting the box lid down at last.

“Crowley, let me explain what it means first.”

Crowley at last looked up from the collar. “I know what --” she began in her impatient, why-don’t-you-have-a-mobile tone. But she cut herself off. “Suppose you tell me what it means.”

“Well, on a purely practical level, this is to help you feel safe.”

Crowley’s eyebrows crawled back up to her hairline. “That’s...not at all what I thought you were going to say.”

Aziraphale took hold of her hand. “When you are wearing this collar, you will obey me instantly. You will not backtalk, you will not argue, you will not negotiate. You will not,” she looked down her nose, “ask questions, except to clarify an instruction. You will do what you are told immediately and without hesitation.”

There was a faint pressure as Crowley squeezed her hand. Crowley’s palm, Aziraphale noticed, was sweaty. “I will…” There was uncertainty in it, but not reluctance. Good.

“And you will know, as you do so, that I am looking after you. While you wear it, you will always be aware of me, you will know where I am, you will know what I’m doing, you will know what I want. We will be together, and safe.”

Crowley looked down, her hand tracing the snakeskin pattern. “Can I take it off?”

Aziraphale laughed. “It’s not a wedding ring, Crowley. Of course you can take it off!” She grasped Crowley’s chin, as she had that morning, and tilted her face up. “You know I could never give up your command of me, after all. You do look after me so beautifully too.”

A lightning-like grin flashed, and Crowley raised their joined hands to kiss Aziraphale’s knuckles. “Anytime.”

“My darling,” Aziraphale sighed. “Neither of us have ever had anything that was truly ours. Weapons, battle uniforms, even our corporations -- all requisitioned military gear. The shop, even your Bentley -- we love them, but these are things we cannot hold onto. And the friends we’ve made, most precious, but most painfully temporary. Only you and I, only we last. We can only hold onto one another. And I mean to.”

She stopped, dry-mouthed. All this was intended for Crowley, but her heart had risen in her chest, warmth expanding beyond the heat of the day. She swallowed around the ache in her throat and observed the crinkling deepen at the edges of Crowley’s eyes.

“I love you,” Crowley said.

“I’d like very much to put the collar on you now, if you are willing.”

Crowley took a breath, and there, in the middle of the park, removed her sunglasses and squinted against the late summer light. “Do it.”

“My brave, beautiful darling,” Aziraphale exclaimed, falling on her with a kiss. Crowley opened soft and urgent, hands in Aziraphale’s hair. She wanted to melt into it, to wrap Crowley in her arms and cover her with kisses until the sun set and the stars came out. But that was for another day. She broke the embrace and held Crowley by both wrists. Crowley’s pupils were hairlike slits in the bright sun, but she bore it bravely, and it was glorious to see her golden eyes uncovered in the light of day. “I love you.”

Aziraphale lifted the collar from the box, opening the clasp, and placed it around Crowley’s neck. It fit perfectly at the base of her throat, the o-ring falling into the divot between her collarbones.

“How do you feel, my dear?”

Crowley sat up remarkably straight, propped on one arm, her shoulders back, though her legs still curled snugly serpentine around Aziraphale’s. Her mouth moved, jaw thrusting forward as it often did when she was struggling to reply. This question was always difficult for her, but especially in moments of sexual arousal.

“Ready to do anything for you,” she said, a low rasp, threaded with passion. Aziraphale thrilled to hear it, tingling all over. “So, same old, I reckon.”

“And?”

Crowley made one of her long vowel sounds. “I dunno, angel. Comfy?” Belying this, she squirmed on the blanket. But Aziraphale could see, in her alert but relaxed posture, the collar was already beginning to do its work.

“Good. Now get up and go bend over that hedge.” Aziraphale gestured to the waist-high, tidily trimmed hedge that surrounded their little dell, the reason she had chosen this particular spot.

“Skirt’s a bit short for that, isn’t it?” Crowley said, but she had already risen and was walking toward the hedge. Very good. “I’ll be flashing my arse to half the city.” Her sibilants dragged a little, betraying Crowley’s emotion. Was she aroused by the idea? Aziraphale did hope so.

“While you wear the collar, your arse is mine to do with as I please, and right now, I want to see it over that hedge, please. Fold your arms under your head.” The leather jacket should protect Crowley from scratches.

A bitten-off noise, as Crowley remembered she was not to talk back, and then she folded herself over, booted feet about six inches apart, net stockings emphasizing the flexing of her calf muscles and hamstrings. The skirt rose, doing almost nothing to cover Crowley’s pert arse, and the pout of her cunt below, naked lips already shining.

Aziraphale rose and approached to inspect her more closely. “Lovely,” she breathed, watching the gooseflesh rise on Crowley’s skin as a light breeze stirred the trees. Birds sang. Voices carried. She imagined they both were fully aware of the public nature of this display, and she was savouring it. She drew her index finger lightly over Crowley’s wet labia.

“They’re gonna arrest us for public indecency,” Crowley muttered, muffled by the leather of her sleeves.

“You would never let anything happen to us,” Aziraphale said, slipping her finger inside Crowley’s cunt without preamble. Crowley gasped, legs trembling. “Now, don’t move. That’s good.”

She turned her hand, exploring, finding Crowley well open already, hollowed out and hungry. The pebbled satin of her interior skin, hot and slippery, expanded under Aziraphale’s touch and it was all too easy to slip in a second finger, then a third.

“Nnnghh,” Crowley moaned, her hips stuttering as she fought to keep them still. A couple passed by on the path in front of the hedge, just a few yards away, and Aziraphale laid her other hand warningly on the small of Crowley’s back. She stilled at once. Aziraphale flamed up anew, at the risk of discovery, at Crowley’s understanding and instant obedience.

When the people had gone by, she said quietly, “Do you know why I am doing this to you, here and now?”

“To find out what it actually takes to get banned from Kew?”

Aziraphale dabbled her thumb in Crowley’s juices, then turned her wrist so that the tip of it grazed Crowley’s arsehole. Crowley let out a tiny whine. “I want everyone to see that you belong to me.” She plunged her thumb inside, as Crowley flickered against her, tight for a moment and then softening like butter, to the accompaniment of a strangled noise. Aziraphale looked to see her biting her sleeve. Beautiful.

Working her gently below, she stroked Crowley’s long, flexible spine as it shivered, feeling the tension as Crowley tried so hard not to buck her hips the way she wanted. Crowley dearly loved to be fucked in all her orifices, she would be feeling so much pleasure now; slightly off-balance, perhaps, but in a way that should be displacing other sorts of doubts from her mind.

“Aziraphale --” Crowley gasped, and then stopped.

“You’re so good for me, darling. And everyone can see it.” She fucked in a little harder, not increasing the pace, just the intensity, being careful not even to graze Crowley’s clitoris. “Everyone can see how good you are, complying with all of my commands, letting me take you here, anywhere, and you’re ripe and ready for me, just the way I like. Just for me.”

Crowley moaned softly, the vibration rich under Aziraphale’s palm. Aziraphale thrust in faster, giving Crowley three hard strokes before softening to a lazy circling motion. “You’re mine. And I’m not letting you go, not now, not ever.” Crowley’s cunt clutched desperately, tightening down, reaching for a release she was not going to get -- not anytime soon.

Withdrawing her fingers, Aziraphale slid the other hand down to arrange Crowley’s skirt. “Now then,” she said, withdrawing her handkerchief and cleaning her hand, “we should start back to the bookshop. I have something very particular to show you there.”

* * *

Crowley didn’t remember the drive, but she was sliding the Bentley into the customary spot in front of the bookshop before she knew it.

She was a mess, cunt aching, clit screaming in bewildered neglect, slick all down her thighs, sweat staining her Sirens shirt (actual memorabilia from an actual show Crowley had actually gone to in the actual 1980s, not that she’d ever admit that to Aziraphale). And now she was following the angel into the shop, into the back, into their place, the place where it had happened.

Where so many things had happened, and if she could just focus on the lovely stuff, maybe she wouldn’t feel so --

Where was Aziraphale? There, there, relax, she was right in front of her. She’d shucked her coat and stood in her shirtsleeves, head tilted slightly to one side, examining Crowley’s face.

“Glasses off now, please,” she said, her hand open to receive them. And that was new. The demand, and the implicit -- was she going to take them away? Crowley swallowed, felt the collar tighten briefly against her throat as she did so, metal warm now from her body heat. The collar that meant the angel would never go away from her again. The collar that meant she must do as Aziraphale said, instantly.

With a trembling hand, she removed her glasses and handed them over. Aziraphale folded them carefully and set them on the lace-covered table. She turned back to Crowley, eyes roaming over her face.

“Yes. Much as I have thoroughly appreciated your ensemble today, Crowley, and the care you took to recreate this memory for me,” she stroked Crowley’s cheekbone with the backs of her fingers and Crowley fought to keep her eyes open at the sensation, “I will have you naked now.”

Aziraphale clicked her fingers, and Crowley’s clothes vanished, reappearing folded on the table, boots below, falling over with a soft thump. Crowley, acutely conscious of the collar now that she was wearing nothing else, felt a bit like falling over with a soft thump herself. The hot August air did nothing to soothe the prickle of her skin as gooseflesh rose, her nipples hardened, every hair on her nape stood up, vibrating with attention. The collar, smooth and hard, clasped her throat implacably.

Hooking a finger through the winged ring in the center, Aziraphale hauled Crowley over to a small footstool, one Aziraphale sometimes used while reading. She kicked the stool around so it was facing Crowley’s favourite chair, about a meter away. “Kneel here,” she said.

Crowley knelt.

“Good. Clasp your hands behind your neck, please.”

She did it, thoughtless, unwondering. Something was switching off in her brain. The anxiety was background noise. The angel was here, and she was everything.

The angel in question loosed her bowtie with a sharp, practiced, one-handed gesture, and Crowley gasped and wobbled on her knees. Aziraphale smirked. Then, quick as you like, she bound Crowley’s wrists together with the tie, and secured them to the collar’s ring. Crowley could smell her more intensely than ever at this range, the waft of her arousal complicating the lush jungle funk plaited through the angelic sweetness. Crowley’s mouth filled.

Aziraphale’s uncompromising blue gaze traveled Crowley’s face, throat, bound arms. Crowley thought about the way her breasts were thrust up in this position, offered up to Aziraphale’s eyes. She really, really hoped Aziraphale had decided she liked boobs. And, well, all the rest of it. She swallowed against the collar again, felt the weight of its reassurance, and arched her back deliberately.

“Oh, yes, that’s just lovely,” Aziraphale said warmly. “Legs a little further apart, please.” Crowley nudged her knees apart, feeling the tension in her thighs. The lips of her pussy parted in one smooth, slick sensation.

Aziraphale nodded approvingly. She ran her thumb through the shaved hair at Crowley’s temple, grazing the edge of her ear, and Crowley shivered, smelling herself on Aziraphale's hand. The thumb ran down Crowley’s neck, tugging briefly at the collar so Crowley could feel the restraint there and at her wrists too, and then dragged down her chest to circle her left breast. Crowley gasped. “Hmm,” Aziraphale said, moving that warm gentle pressure into a light tease around, but not on, her nipple. Crowley whined. “Well, this is very interesting.”

“Angel,” Crowley hissed, as wetness flooded her cunt.

“Yes, I’m going to need to try this for myself. But first, I think…” she made a calculating face and then clicked down a miracle. Crowley shouted as she was breached, her arse nudged gently open by an indescribable pressure. Aziraphale stood before her, both hands in view, and yet something -- _something_ was thrusting itself gradually, inexorably inside of her.

“What -- what --”

“We talked about this once before, my dear, do you remember?” Aziraphale stroked her face lovingly as Crowley shook under her touch, her arse pried apart, stretching open. Her pussy ached with need. “I’m creating pressure from the air. It’s a rather neat trick, atomically speaking. And no lubricant required.”

“You -- ah, ah!” The thing -- non-thing -- bottomed out inside her, and her arsehole closed deliciously, filthily around its base. Crowley writhed with pleasure, clenching against it. “You made a buttplug," she panted. "Out of protons and electrons.”

“Well, what else? They’re what everything’s made of, after all.” Aziraphale took that firm grip of Crowley’s jaw again, thumb tracing through the sweat that had broken out on her face. “You seem to be enjoying it.”

“Ngk.”

“And you look divine, which was the point. My love, you are perfect.” Aziraphale dropped her lips to Crowley’s mouth, and Crowley opened to her, let herself be plumbed. Aziraphale’s tongue was hungry and inquisitive, but the kiss was infuriatingly shallow, far too brief. “Now then.”

Aziraphale settled herself in Crowley’s favourite chair, and began unbuttoning her shirt. Crowley gazed thirstily as the swell of her breasts was revealed, pale and already slightly flushed. Crowley could just see an inch or two or tantalizing skin above the parting of her shirt; this Aziraphale stroked musingly with two fingers, her pink lips barely parted. The look on her face, concentration, discovery, pleasure, was one Crowley could watch for hours, even though she was desperate for more. And Aziraphale was watching her right back -- eyes locked on Crowley even as she touched her own body. Crowley went a bit stupid.

“You’re in my chair,” she said, stupidly.

“Yes, my dear. I’m in your chair.” Aziraphale smiled, a faraway look stealing over her face. “I have such fond memories of this chair now. This is where you first showed me how you like to touch your cunt. I thought it only fitting for today.” She shifted slightly, plumper-than-ever thighs making a slight shushing sound against one another in their trousers. “Mmm, yes, very happy memories.” She removed her watch and chain to the side table and unbuttoned her waistcoat.

Crowley knew from experience at this point that Aziraphale’s thoughts about underwear could be summed up by “clean, comfortable, and decades out of fashion”. She had no idea what to expect, but she was completely unprepared for what the angel uncovered as she undid the next button on the familiar seafoam shirt.

[They used to call them bullet bras](https://www.ebay.com/itm/1947-Marja-womens-brassiere-bra-white-kitten-vintage-fashion-ad-/303204229187). Last in fashion in about 1947, the elaborately-stitched, determinedly modest, pointy-knockered white seamed monstrosity Aziraphale was wearing should have been properly abandoned (Crowley would never say burnt) in the 60s, not wrapped around her beautiful angel. And yet, it was. Crowley could at last understand how she had managed the whole afternoon without a jiggle: that thing was armor, sure as any Heaven-issued battle dress. Crowley had only one question: why was it making her so hot?

Devoid of lace, bows, or any such feminine frippery, Aziraphale’s bra was industrial-strength, weapons-grade breast control, and as such it melted Crowley’s heart and what little was left of her brain. At least it wasn’t tartan.

Crowley was briefly distracted from the pale hills of Aziraphale’s breasts rising breathtakingly over the cups by the familiar sound of metal hitting the side table. She was removing her cufflinks. Crowley jerked her eyes to Aziraphale’s delectable round wrists in time to see her, for the second time today, rolling up her sleeves.

“I noticed earlier today how silky my skin is here,” Aziraphale mused, sliding a finger from wrist to bared inner elbow in an echo of the way she had stroked Crowley in her bathroom this morning. Crowley’s cunt clenched at the memory, at Aziraphale’s inbreath now. “So fine-grained. Almost frictionless.” She turned to Crowley, narrowing her eyes, but she spoke conversationally, still petting her own arm slowly, lazily. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been so soft.”

Her fingertips tingling to touch phantom angelic flesh, Crowley tugged at her restraints. Aziraphale hadn’t miracled them, so she could of course have escaped at any time. But, as had been pointed out to her many times before, Aziraphale knew she wouldn’t do that. “You utter bastard.”

Aziraphale pinked up even more readily in this new form. “So you always say,” she smiled, and stroked her fingertips over the tops of her breasts, where they just barely spilled over the implacable bra. “Oh, my goodness.”

In Aziraphale’s usual corporation, nipples were to be nibbled, kissed, and sucked certainly -- there was no way Crowley could have resisted their luscious candylike pinkness. But Aziraphale only found the experience mildly erotic, compared to many other things they did together. It appeared things might be different now. “Feeling good, angel?”

“They’re so sensitive,” she gasped. “I’m only just touching my chest, and I can feel it -- I can feel it _everywhere_!”

Had their roles been reversed, Crowley would have demanded specificity about that, about what exactly she was feeling and where she was feeling it, and no doubt Aziraphale would have allowed her to provide instruction (Crowley remembered, with a flood of heat to her face, how well that had worked out in the past). Now, though, Crowley bit her lip and squirmed, desperate to get her hands, her mouth on Aziraphale’s breasts, and knowing that it wouldn’t happen until the angel was blessedly good and ready. A fresh flood of juice soaked her thighs and her arse tried to grind down against the emptiness holding her open.

She watched in miserable delight as Aziraphale’s dimpled hands slid down to cup her breasts, palms making delicate circles. They both moaned.

Aziraphale ran her hands down her belly, still encased in shirt and waistcoat, then back up over her breasts, thumbs stroking over the tips. Crowley could see the shiver that ran through her.

“Oh, it’s too good.” Aziraphale unbuttoned her waistcoat one-handed, the other thumb moving slowly back and forth over her nipple. She got both hands under her shirt now, squeezing and pinching, gasping low in her throat but her eyes locked on Crowley.

“Are you having a lovely time, dear?”

Questions. Words. The angel wanted words. Right.

“Yes, angel,” Crowley stammered helplessly.

“What do you think of my underclothes?”

Crowley was going to have to admit it now, wasn’t she. She groaned, “It’s hot. It’s the perfect choice for you.”

“I’m pleased you think so,” Aziraphale smiled, and then her face opened in a groan as she pinched again, harder this time. She unbuttoned the shirt now, one-handed again, greedy hand still on greedy breast, but she took the time to pull the shirt off, revealing herself in her new bra -- and her new body -- so that Crowley echoed her groan.

“Please --” and she bit her tongue, feeling the collar tight against her throat. No negotiation.

Aziraphale’s brows drew together in a stern look, then softened when Crowley didn’t continue. “Good. If you maintain this level of discipline, you will have everything you’re craving, I promise you.” With that, she looked down, fetchingly showing off the double chin that Crowley loved to nibble on. Both hands swept into the right-hand cup and lifted out the most gorgeous breast Crowley had ever seen. “Oh, that does feel better, doesn’t it.” Quickly, she lifted out the other, and then looked back up at Crowley, eyes gleaming.

Crowley stared. Aziraphale’s breasts were large, teardrop-shaped, somewhat nudged downward by gravity but with gumdrop nipples upstanding on saucer-sized areolae. Her skin was white and faintly transparent; Crowley could just make out tiny blue veins before Aziraphale’s hands covered everything.

“Oh, that feels wonderful,” she breathed, stroking all round the soft pale skin, and making tiny circles with her fingertips, edging closer and closer to her nipples. “I understand so many poems so much better now.”

Something deep in Crowley was laughing at this, but that part was inaccessible now as Aziraphale ran her thumbs over her peaking nipples, shut her eyes, and gasped. “Fuck,” Crowley said, once again stifling the urge to grovel.

“You look so beautiful there for me, dear,” Aziraphale said, her eyes fluttering open and raking over Crowley. “I love having you displayed there for me. Your sweet cunt is all flushed and I can see how wet you are. How do you feel behind?” On this last word, Crowley felt herself pushed open wider and she growled in frustrated delight.

“Nngggh, lovely, fucking lovely. Just want you already. Hands are itching with it. You look a treat.”

“Mmm, you make me so happy, darling. And so _wet_ , goodness gracious. Or perhaps that’s what I’m doing to myself, ah,” Aziraphale was pinching her nipples now, alternating with little tugs on them, stretching the skin out. They had reddened beautifully. Crowley thought she might die. “You know, I’m so very impatient. I think I just have to touch my cunt now.”

“Oh sweet stars, yes.”

Crowley’s eyes followed Aziraphale’s hand down to the fastening of her trousers, even as she still moaned and sighed, her other hand still teasing and tormenting her breast. Gradually, a pair of high-waisted white briefs were revealed, barely restraining the plump belly that Crowley always craved. With a series of surprisingly dignified and unsurprisingly endearing little wiggles, the angel shimmied trousers and pants down to pool at her ankles, revealing the new luxurious spread of her hips and thighs, the familiar hot wet curls between them. The jungle smell of her was everywhere now, a hit of pure lust straight to Crowley’s reptilian brain.

“I feel wonderful!” Aziraphale exulted, stroking both hands down her belly and thighs. “My darling, I am so plush and pillowy and perfect, you will absolutely love this body. Mmm, and I am so sensitive! If I’d known it would feel this way, I would have done it ages ago.”

Crowley bit her lip and whined, hands clenching with the need to stroke all that fine flesh, the memory of plush angel under her hands, and the novelty of this version that she had never touched.

“Soon,” Aziraphale purred, “soon, oh my,” this last a thready exhalation as her middle finger dipped between her legs. “Oh, fuck, I’m going to please myself so well. And you are going to watch.”

Crowley’s breath punched out of her as her cunt and heart clenched together. She felt swollen, liquid, gloriously alive, and yet her mind was calm for the first time in weeks. She was going to watch.

Aziraphale parted her legs, kicking off the remnants of her clothing and draping her knees over the arms of the chair. Her eyes never leaving Crowley’s face, she assumed a thoughtful expression and shifted her arse in the chair, tilting her hips to expose herself more fully. “Mm, that’s better.” With her left hand she stroked over her belly, toyed for a moment with the blond curls of her mound, and then, with her thumb and middle finger, she spread her plump lips apart. “Oh,” she sighed, as she showed Crowley the pink glistening glory of herself.

Crowley’s mouth filled with saliva. The creamy, lush smell of the angel felled her like an oceanic tide, and she swallowed again and again.

Two manicured fingertips circled, stroking inner lips, teasing the entrance, picking up slickness until they shone. Aziraphale purred, “Mmm, my, that is heavenly -- oh!” At this distance, Crowley could see the clench of her cunt as it rippled in pleasure. “Oh, my, I am remembering how you touched yourself, how you displayed yourself to me, here, in this chair. You were irresistible, my darling. You did it, hmm, like this…”

She entered herself with the tips of two fingers, turning her fat wrist to swipe her thumb over her clit, red and emerging from its hood. Crowley trembled, her body resonating with sense memory. This was indeed the way she had touched herself that day, a familiar and favored way to bring herself off, and her clit, neglected for hours, throbbed with the ghost of that tantalizing pressure.

“Mm, yes, that is very nice.” Aziraphale rotated her wrist further, the better to fuck herself more deeply, and a keening rose from Crowley’s throat. Aziraphale’s gaze, which had dropped to Crowley’s mouth, locked back onto her eyes, hot blue like a gas flame. “Are you enjoying this, my dear?”

Words. The angel wanted more words. “Yes, Aziraphale.”

The sweet face softened beautifully in delight. “That’s wonderful. You’re wonderful. Oh, oh, yes, I do see why you like this, mmm,” Aziraphale worked inside herself more energetically for a moment, then withdrew her hand, bringing it to her mouth. “But I find,” she drew the shining fingers over her lips, pink tongue darting out and licking greedily, “my clitoris wants more attention than it allows me.” The hand moved south again, just the middle finger stroking now around, but not over, her clit. One side, then the other, long and languid strokes. “Do you remember, Crowley, when you first taught me how to touch it?”

Crowley shivered all over at the memory, and watched Aziraphale’s eyes close as her fingertip settled firmly on her hood, making slow circles. “I remember.”

“Ah, oh, I’ve learned a few things since then, oh, fuck, that’s so good.” The angel’s breasts bounced gently as her hand moved faster, lips still spread wide with the other hand so Crowley could see everything, the shine on her, the pink of her, her finger moving in urgent circles, cunt grasping rhythmically.

Burning, she was burning, all over. The shop wasn’t on fire, it was Crowley, alight from the blaze of her untouched pussy to the roots of her hair, her toes curling in frustration beneath her. Juice ran down her trembling thighs. Her hands, clenched into fists, strained and strove against bonds she could have broken with a thought. But she was collared, bent to the angel’s will, where she wanted to be. Burning.

“Look at you, you radiant creature, I can see how gloriously hungry you are, how resplendent in your submission. Oh, Crowley, my love, my dearest, you please me so well, you shining, exquisite -- ah, oh --” Aziraphale’s finger slowed, dipped inside herself, she shook her head slowly from side to side and her breasts, flushed, shifted with the movement. “-- not yet, not yet…” She laughed a little, three fingers inside herself now, churning in deep circles, hips working. Slick was pouring out of her, a dark stain once again threatening the upholstery. Crowley would see to it, later. If the angel asked her to.

Aziraphale’s fingers were back on her clit now, her hand jerking in rapid strokes, almost a blur. “Spread your legs a little wider for me, Crowley,” she gasped, and Crowley’s knees moved almost of their own accord. “Good, good, lovely, arch your back just a little more, show me those sweet breasts.” Crowley complied, and felt the heat of the angel’s gaze on her peaking nipples as her body drew into a tight bow, chest thrust forward, thighs hard with exertion. “So beautiful,” Aziraphale panted. “Now I know you can take more for me. Just a little -- mm --”

The delicious ache in Crowley’s arse spiked into a breathtaking sense of being rent almost apart as the nothing inside her grew larger. She groaned and rolled her hips back into it.

“Fuck! Yes, yes, my darling! Oh! Oh, you’re making me come! Oh, you beautiful thing! Oh, my sweetest, my dearest! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

Crowley felt the wave of it in her own body, a wash of heat and, paradoxically, a cooling sort of relief breaking over her head, leaving her freshly covered in goosebumps and something that might, on closer inspection, prove to be joy. She had been floating in a kind of drugged haze, but the new intensity of the pressure inside her and the power of Aziraphale’s orgasm had brought her back to herself a little. She watched Aziraphale stroke herself through the comedown, slowing but not stopping, hips stuttering, face flushed and shiny with sweat, her lickable smile from ear to ear.

“Please, angel.”

Aziraphale’s fingers slipped inside her cunt again and her eyes fluttered shut as she lazily fucked herself. “Is there -- uuhh -- something you want, my dear?”

Crowley risked it. “Can I kiss you?”

Aziraphale’s face softened into a look Crowley had first seen at the Ritz, and had been lucky enough to see many times since. “My darling. Please come and kiss me.”

Awkwardly, Crowley rose from the stool, hands still bound behind her neck, and on shaky legs managed the single step to the chair before dropping to her knees again, this time on the rug. The wet heat from Aziraphale’s body clung to Crowley. She craned forward and Aziraphale closed the gap, taking Crowley’s lower lip into her mouth. Crowley moaned and opened, soft and helpless, letting Aziraphale do the kissing, tasting the lingering juice of her, the new zing in it from this new body. Oh, Satan, this new body.

She broke the kiss to get her mouth on Aziraphale’s tits, totally without permission and she didn’t care much at this point, soft, so soft, she thought she would die of softness -- was that possible? How could a being be this soft? Crowley heard herself groaning helplessly into the wealth of the angel’s breasts, nuzzled, nosed, and nibbled her way to a wide rosy areola and got her teeth on a nipple before Aziraphale laughingly pushed her away.

“There will be plenty of time for that, I promise you --”

“Promise me. Promise me.”

“I promise you, but I have other uses for your mouth just now.”

Crowley was instantly alert. “Have you, now,” she grinned.

Aziraphale’s face went steely. Her hand went to Crowley’s collar, fingertips tapping it. “Do you need a reminder about what this means?”

Crowley knelt up, away from the angel’s glorious nudity, aching with regret and remorse, dropping her gaze. “No, angel. Sorry.”

She felt the warm, solid hand gripping her chin once again, met the hot blue stare, this time evaluating, considering. A decision was made, Crowley heard a snap, and her hands fell free. “Lick me,” Aziraphale said, already pushing Crowley’s head down. “And finger my cunt. Just the way I like it. No devilry.”

A thrill ran through Crowley. At last. “Yes, an--” but then there was the angel’s succulent cunt, and she was all for it, words forgotten in the redolent scent-taste, her tongue flickering out above Aziraphale’s damp mound for an instant to capture it all before she pressed her face there and sighed. The wet heat of the angel enveloped her, her flavour somewhat mellowed now with the liquid evidence of her recent orgasm, a sweetness overlaying the tart pungency. Crowley groaned and laid her tongue alongside Aziraphale’s clit, fat and ripe, remembering the first time she’d tasted her here.

Aziraphale let out an oversensitized hiss, and Crowley started to pull away, but Aziraphale’s hand tightened in her hair. “Stay right where you are,” she said. “Give me those long, lovely fingers.”

Crowley brought her right hand to her mouth, sucked her first two fingers hurriedly, and slipped the tips of them gently into the angel’s vestibule. Aziraphale was still a little tight here, the grainy flesh swollen all round, but she was very wet, and when Crowley stroked gently at her upper wall she gasped and rocked gently into Crowley’s face. Crowley’s fingers slid a little further in, to where the vault of the angel’s cunt opened wide and yearning, plush and greedy like Aziraphale herself, and Crowley gave a long light lick to her clit and fell right in up to her third knuckle.

“Oh, oh, my darling, yes, yes, _just_ like that.”

Her own clit throbbing with every stroke, Crowley got to work, laying long, broad laps up Aziraphale’s shaft as she beckoned slowly inside her: come here, come to me, come. Every so often, of course, she added a dash of devilry, swapping out her humanish tongue for her snakey one and feathering lightly over the tip of the angel’s clit while she squirmed and whined and pulled Crowley’s hair hard enough to send ripples of pleasure down her back. Then she returned to the fat, juicy strokes with the flat of her tongue, faster now, as Aziraphale sang her oral sex love song.

“Crowley, my dearest, you are so good to me. So good. You give me everything I want, you do it so perfectly, you delight, you treasure, you wonderful creature, I adore you, you are _so good_...”

Crowley had been wet so long and yet she could still feel the fresh waves of it sluicing out of her every time the angel said she was good. She had been aching for release for hours now, but she could be happy here forever. It didn’t get any better than this.

She felt Aziraphale opening up even further for her, slippery and gaping, even as she started to bear down in her rising ecstasy. She gave her another finger.

“Oh, oh, yes!” Aziraphale groaned, and Crowley heard the smile in her voice, flicked up her eyes to see it on her face, flushed and exuberant, desperate and joyful. Crowley licked faster, her tongue dancing over the angel’s clit, and pressed up into her, harder. Fucking her, fucking her, it was everything.

“Yes, yes, Crowley, I’m coming!” With a great and unexpected gush, she certainly was, spurting all over Crowley’s neck and chest. “Oh! Oh! Oh! Fuckfuckfuckfuck don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop,” Aziraphale gasped as Crowley fucked into her cunt again and again, pressing her tongue down flat, dripping with a new angelic essence she’d never scented before. She kept going for what might have been a full minute as Aziraphale bucked her hips and cried out over and over, her gorgeous juicy folds rhythmically squeezing Crowley’s hand.

Finally, she settled back to the chair with a thump and unwound her fingers from Crowley’s smarting scalp. She petted there for a moment. “Well!” She huffed out. Crowley cautiously lifted her head. “Crowley, that was absolutely wonderful! Oh, no no, do stop now,” she pushed at Crowley’s hand, which Crowley had turned and was moving in insinuating circles, thumb on Aziraphale’s clit. Aziraphale shuddered and Crowley withdrew. Aziraphale promptly pushed her wet hand into Crowley’s mouth.

Fuck, that was hot. Everything was hot. She was losing the thread here. That weird floaty feeling was wearing off. Possibly getting sprayed in the chest with angelic ejaculate had some kind of magical effect, but Crowley wanted to get off her knees, suddenly. She wanted to come.

She took her hand out of her mouth and brought it to Aziraphale’s lips. Aziraphale’s eyes widened but she sucked Crowley’s fingers obligingly. “You came all over me. Your cunt’s never done that before.”

Aziraphale dropped her hand abruptly. “I did what?”

“You ejaculated. Didn’t you feel it?”

“It felt -- it all has felt -- different this time. Better.” Amazingly, she blushed. “More intense. And the orgasms lasted longer, more contractions, deeper. I’m sure I don’t know why.”

“Maybe I do. When you made a cunt before, did you do, yanno, _all_ the bits?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know. Reproductive system. Urinary system. All the bits.”

“What on earth would I do that for? I wanted to have orgasms, not children! Why would I have needed a _womb_ , for Heaven’s sake?”

“Well, you’ve got them now, right? Uterus? Urethral sponge?”

Aziraphale blinked. “Well, I -- I did the whole thing this time.” She gestured to her corporation. “I was trying to be comprehensive.”

“That’s why it feels so good,” Crowley grinned. “And, apparently, why you can make such a mess.” Crowley ran her dry hand through Aziraphale’s come, now dripping down her thighs. She brought it to her face. “Fuck, you’re tasty. All of you.”

Aziraphale reached toward her with both hands. “Come here, come to me. Come,” until Crowley slithered up onto her lap, gasping as the non-thing inside her made its presence felt again. Aziraphale licked her left breast and she gasped again, instantly erect. “Oh, that is nice, isn’t it.” And then Aziraphale sucked Crowley’s whole breast into her mouth.

“Stars!” Aziraphale dimpled as she swirled her tongue around Crowley’s nipple and delicately bit down. Crowley shivered all over, clamping down on the nothing she was filled with. Her clit yearned and strove and she pressed her thighs together, against Aziraphale’s thighs, squirming, desperate for contact. Enough.

She brought her hands to Aziraphale’s face and pulled her gently off. Kissed the tip of her tilted nose, unable to resist. Slid off her lap and stood up. Grasped the clasp of the collar. Snick. It fell off into her hands. She placed it gently on the footstool, giving it a caress with one finger before turning back. Aziraphale was regarding her with bright, inquisitive eyes.

“Get on the floor, angel.”

“The floor?” The censure in her voice was unmistakable. The uptilted nose wrinkled.

“All right.” Crowley snapped the carpet free of dirt and dust, and transported pillows and the duvet from Aziraphale's bed. “Make yourself a nest. But I want you inside me. Both hands. Now.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened, and she swallowed. “I say,” she said, getting up from the chair, wobbling a bit on her shaking legs, “I am appreciating this tone. So -- _directive._ ” She went down to her knees, and Crowley had a brief image of what she’d look like in a collar of her own. No. She’d think of something that suited the angel better.

“On your back, sweetheart,” Crowley growled. She watched as Aziraphale lay back, her gorgeous breasts falling into her armpits, hips and thighs spreading out lusciously on the duvet. “Fuck, you’re lovely,” she said, kneeling on top of her, one leg between those sumptuous thighs. “Now get this thing out of me.”

Aziraphale laughed quietly and clicked her fingers. Crowley felt the stretch of her arse gently releasing. “Better?”

“Mmm. Now get your pretty hands where they belong.”

“So bossy!”

“You like it.” She leaned down for a kiss, a proper one this time, licking meaningfully into the angel’s mouth and fluttering her tongue at the inside of her upper lip as she felt slick fingers stroke her arsehole and begin to open her up. “Mmf. Hurry up. You don’t need to work me open, I’ve been ah haa haaah --” she gasped, as what felt like four fingers went knuckle deep. “Fuck, yes,” she groaned into Aziraphale’s throat, bucking against the sweet slick ache of it. “Now the other one.”

“Poor thing, you’ve waited so long,” Aziraphale murmured, as the tips of her fingers dabbled at the entrance of Crowley’s pussy. “My goodness, so wet.”

“Yeah, small wonder. Holy fuck, your tits,” Crowley moaned into her left breast, both hands stroking and gently squeezing. “I’m gonna live here. Oh, oh fuuuuuck,” as Aziraphale’s other hand thrust slowly into her cunt.

She sat up, riding high, full to the brim with Aziraphale, who was spread out beneath her, all she wanted in the world and would never, ever lose. With a sly look, Aziraphale turned her wrist and put her thumb on Crowley’s clit. Crowley sang out, every part of her striving toward ecstasy but already living it, fulfilled, satiated, overflowing with love.

Right now, in this moment, what could be wrong? Here, in this place, the safest place Crowley knew. She was in the angel’s hands. And here, in this very spot, where she had stood desperately calling Aziraphale’s name, blasted by the firehose. And a moment ago in this very spot, Aziraphale had called her name and blasted her with a torrent of her own. Crowley was laughing as she came.

* * *

Aziraphale pulled Crowley more firmly against her, nuzzling her cheek. She felt a gentle squeeze of her right breast and smiled to realize Crowley’s hands had indeed never left her bosom, even during her climax and the sticky, cuddlesome afterglow.

“How do you feel now, my love?” she asked, running her finger along Crowley’s throat. A faint red line marked where she had pulled against the collar.

“Amazing. You’re amazing.” Crowley’s ribs expanded under Aziraphale’s arm as she took a deep breath and sighed it out, burrowing further into Aziraphale and the duvet. She seemed quite content. Relaxed.

“Do you know, when you called the other day, to bring over the quiche? I had a line from a poem stuck in my head.”

A wicked smile perked up the edge of Crowley’s lip. “Some of my best work.”

Brushing her fingertips over Crowley’s lips, her cheek, her ear, Aziraphale recited:

“As if a phantom caress’d me, I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;

But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore, the one I loved that caress’d me,

As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has utterly disappear’d.

And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.”

A moment passed, as the meaning of the verse crowded into Aziraphale’s mind, and she wondered at the ineffability of that line having come to her, before she really knew what was bothering Crowley.

Crowley’s brow furrowed and then she propped her head up on one elbow. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

She blew out a breath. “Familiar. Not the poem. The -- “ she waved a hand. “Yeah. It was kind of...like that.” She met Aziraphale’s eyes, her pupils slowly returning to their typical size in their golden pools. “Still is, sometimes. Probably will be again. The collar did help.”

Aziraphale smiled. “I’m so glad. We can use it whenever you need it. Or just, whenever you’d like.”

The wicked smile was back, broader now, toothy. “Whenever _I’d_ like?”

Infuriating. Delicious. “And perhaps whenever you need a good thwarting.” She pulled Crowley down on top of her and lightly bit at her throat, where the mark was.

Crowley hummed and her thigh slithered between Aziraphale’s legs. “And I gather you’ll be the judge of that?”

Aziraphale took Crowley’s head in her hands, gaze roaming over the beloved face, wide golden eyes, dear beaky nose, red-bitten devilish mouth open in temptation. “You know I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> All my profound gratitude to [juliet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliet), who took time from Nanowrimo to provide outstanding, detailed beta and Britpicking. I now know how to drive to Kew from Soho among many other indispensable facts. Thank you forever, my friend!
> 
> This story also owes a profound debt to [jessthereckless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessthereckless), whose brilliant, scorching, and devastating [The Lady Gardener](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21519955) I reread fervently.
> 
> I also want to thank everyone who reached out with kind words of support when I was in too much pain to write. I deeply appreciate your generosity, patience, and emoji love.


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